Well, besides the long, successful career in publishing and television. And being the author of a pop culture book phenomenon and HBO series. Okay, really I’m just talking about the long books.
His A Song of Ice and Fire series has ballooned into larger books, extra books (when one got too large), and a longer wait for books. But it’s not all just fantasy world-building. There are so many characters in his series, so many lives following their own twists and turns.
The Seventh Sons of Sycamore is mainly about two people, Maxim and Diego. I flip between their POVs (and an additional one) and manage to tell their stories in a short novel. Part of the reason the book didn’t balloon in length is because I skip a lot of downtime, days at a time, and fill in the backstory along the way (like what George R. R. Martin does between chapters). The sequel takes a more personal and moment-to-moment approach, so it’ll be longer by that measure alone.
But I also added a new POV character. Three main characters and one smaller role, each with their own story told scene by scene. And with the detective mystery following in the framework of the great Harry Bosch novels, how did I ever think this could be told without a 6-figure word count?
Live and learn, I guess. I’m hoping the end result is a novel that you can better lose yourself in.
The Moonwitch Wordcount [wppb progress=92478/85000 percent=inside]
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